International Journal of Audiology最新文献

Objectives: Musicians who wear hearing aids are a unique subset of hearing-impaired individuals. There are a number of issues musicians experience with hearing aids, making effective hearing rehabilitation a challenge. Research suggests hearing aid satisfaction in musicians is lower partly due to their advanced listening skills, however, qualitative research addressing musicians who wear hearing aids for music is scarce. The current study aimed to record the barriers encountered by musicians who wear hearing aids when playing their instrument/singing, listening to recorded music and listening to live music.

Design: Professional musicians who wear hearing aids were interviewed. Participants were questioned about their experiences with hearing loss and hearing aids, with particular emphasis on experiences listening to recorded and live music, and playing or performing music with the hearing aids.

Study sample: Eight professional musicians were interviewed, using a semi-structured interview style, with a question and prompt guide.

Results: Thematic analysis revealed three main themes in the data: the musicians' journey, communication, and flexibility/adjustability.

Conclusions: The results have implications for future research into specific fitting parameters for hearing aids for musicians (particularly for music performance), the need for evidence-based rehabilitation programs for musicians with hearing loss, and the need for a glossary of terms to assist communication between Audiologists and musicians.

Objective: Young adults are at risk for hearing loss caused by exposure to loud music. Intervention at this stage provides opportunities to support lifelong hearing protection use. This study explores attitudes related to hearing, hearing loss, and hearing protection among university students.

Design: Qualitative interview design, supplemented by quantitative questionnaire data.

Study sample: 18 university students, aged 18-24 years.

Results: Students were uncertain about mechanisms of noise-induced hearing loss, did not feel vulnerable to permanent hearing damage from loud music, were unconvinced of hearing protection efficacy, and reported barriers to hearing protection use. Students emphasised the positive effects of loud music and reported an increased likelihood of using hearing protection were it used by peers. Music students appeared more aware of the negative effects of loud music exposure. Students reported conflicting attitudes regarding government regulation of hearing protection use.

Conclusion: Young adults require education about hearing protection from multiple, credible sources and need to understand the mechanisms behind noise-induced hearing loss in a way that makes it of high personal relevance.

Objective: We aimed to assess the association between occupational noise exposure and tinnitus. Further, to assess whether the association depends on hearing status.

Design: In this cross-sectional study, tinnitus (>1 h daily) was regressed on job exposure matrix (JEM)-based or self-reported occupational noise exposure, adjusted for confounders.

Study sample: The 14,945 participants (42% men, 20-59 years) attended a population-based study in Norway (HUNT4, 2017-2019).

Results: JEM-based noise exposure, assessed as equivalent continuous sound level normalised to 8-h working days (LEX 8 h), over the working career or as minimum 5 years ≥85 dB) was not associated with tinnitus. Years of exposure ≥80 dB (minimum one) was not associated with tinnitus. Self-reported high noise exposure (>15 h weekly ≥5 years) was associated with tinnitus overall and among persons with elevated hearing thresholds (prevalence ratio (PR) 1.3, 1.0-1.7), however not statistically significantly among persons with normal thresholds (PR 1.1, 0.8-1.5).

Conclusions: Our large study showed no association between JEM-based noise exposure and tinnitus. This may to some extent reflect successful use of hearing protection. High self-reported noise exposure was associated with tinnitus, but not among normal hearing persons. This supports that noise-induced tinnitus to a large extent depends on audiometric hearing loss.

Objective: To introduce the urban outdoor version of the Situated Phoneme (SiP) test and investigate its test-retest reliability.

Design: Phonemic discrimination scores in matched-spectrum real-world (MSRW) maskers from an urban outdoor environment were measured using a three-alternative forced choice test paradigm at different phoneme-to-noise ratios (PNR). Each measurement was repeated twice. Test-retest scores for the full 84-trial SiP-test, as well as for four types of contrasting phonemes, were analysed and compared to critical difference scores based on binomial confidence intervals.

Study sample: Seventy-two adult native speakers of Swedish (26-83 years) with symmetric hearing threshold levels ranging from normal hearing to severe sensorineural hearing loss.

Results: Test-retest scores did not differ significantly for the whole test, or for the subtests analysed. A lower amount of test-retest score difference than expected exceeded the bounds of the corresponding critical difference intervals.

Conclusions: The urban outdoor SiP-test has high test-retest reliability. This information can help audiologists to interpret test scores attained with the urban outdoor SiP-test.

Objective: There were two objectives of this current study. (1) To understand the impacts of hearing loss for late-deafened adults and the experiences of support received both from hearing healthcare providers and peers. (2) To understand the types of support needed during and after a cochlear implant.

Design: The study used mixed methods. A survey was posted to three cochlear implant social media groups and participants could self-select to participate in a semi-structured interview by leaving their email address.Study sample: Forty-four late-deafened adults who had also received at least one cochlear implant answered the survey and 16 people were interviewed.

Results: A key finding was that most late-deafened adults did not have access to support through the progression of deafness. They often felt alone, making it difficult to maintain their sense of self while reconciling with the hearing changes forced on them. When participants had positive role models who had experienced hearing loss, or mentors who had undergone cochlear implantation, it assisted them in navigating their changing hearing status. Thus, improved connection to peers sustained self-esteem and improved coping strategies.

Conclusions: The findings suggest hearing healthcare providers need to introduce a mentoring and support structure for connected care.

Objective: To use a standardised reporting tool to identify potential eligible candidates for cochlear implant (CI) referral and quantify the proportion of adults who had a CI referral discussion after presenting with an audiogram within United Kingdom (UK) audiometric criteria.

Design: Retrospective multicentre 6-month audit of Audiology clinic databases.

Study sample: A total of 810 adults from five geographically diverse UK Audiology sites.

Results: Data were collected in late 2019 after UK CI audiometric candidacy criteria changed; one site collected only 3 months of data. The proportion of potential eligible adults (based only on audiometry) considered for CI referral was 64% (521 out of 810) and varied by site (from 50% to 83%). About 24% of patients (123 out of 521) declined CI referral; this also varied across sites (12-45%). The median age of patients where CI referral was not considered was 80 years - significantly higher than the group where CI referral was considered (73 years).

Conclusions: CI referral is dependent on where adults live, and how old they are. Older adults are significantly less likely to be considered for CI referral by Audiologists. Audiology clinics need more support to empower staff to talk to patients about CI referral.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to describe changes in audiometric thresholds over time in children whose hearing loss demonstrated early mild progression.

Design: This was a retrospective follow-up study to examine long-term audiologic results in children with progressive loss.

Study sample: We examined audiologic data for 69 children, (diagnosed from 2003 to 2013), who had been previously categorised as having "minimal" progressive hearing loss.

Results: Children had a median of 10.0 (7.5, 12.1) years of follow-up and a median age of 12.5 (IQR: 11.0, 14.5) years; 92.8%; 64 of 69) of children continued to show progressive hearing loss (defined as a decrease of ≥10 dB at two or more adjacent frequencies between 0.5 and 4 kHz or a decrease in 15 dB at one frequency) in at least one ear since diagnosis. Further examination showed that 82.8% of ears (106 of 128) had deterioration in hearing. Of the 64 children, 29.7% (19/64) showed further deterioration since the first analysis.

Conclusion: More than 90% of children identified as having minimal progressive hearing loss continued to show deterioration in hearing. Ongoing audiological monitoring of children with hearing loss is indicated to ensure timely intervention and to better counsel families.

Objective: The aim of this project was to investigate the provision of counselling in adult audiological rehabilitation and to highlight training barriers and needs.

Design: A service evaluation in which respondents completed a survey in which they rated their knowledge, confidence and competence in addressing the hearing, social and emotional needs of their patients. They were also asked to define counselling.

Sample: 64 UK practising audiologists in adult audiological rehabilitation, aged 20->60 years (84% females, 16% males), with a range of years in clinical practice.

Results: Counselling definitions fell into three main categories: the audiologist as the doer, the audiologist as the facilitator, and the audiologist and patient as partners. Respondents reported feeling more able to counsel the hearing related needs of their patients, than emotional or social needs. There were significant positive statistical associations between counselling training completed and self-rated counselling abilities for managing emotional needs. Clinical experience was not associated with self-rated counselling. Lack of supervision and training were identified as some of the main barriers to providing emotional support. Almost all respondents reported a desire for further training in delivering emotional support, with the belief that this would improve services and patient outcomes.

Conclusions: UK audiologists demonstrated person-centred thinking through their definitions of counselling. However, they reported significant barriers in being able to support the needs of adults with hearing loss. Training needs around emotional support in audiology counselling are not currently being met. It is important for clinical training programmes to address this gap by incorporating more counselling courses into their curricula.

Objective: Best-practice guidelines recommend the use of hearing aid verification in children; however, this is not always performed. Automated hearing aid verification has been reported to be more accurate and efficient than manual verification in adults, but it is not known if this transfers to the paediatric population.

Design: A within-group design compared manual and automated hearing aid verification on four measures; fitting accuracy, prescription targets, completion time, and the speech intelligibility index.

Sample: Twenty paediatric patient hearing aid profiles (M = 8.25 years) with unilateral or bilateral hearing aids.

Results: A Wilcoxon-signed rank test indicated manual verification achieved a significantly closer match to target at 0.5 kHz, by an average of 1 dB. There were no significant differences at any other frequency. Across 80 comparisons (four frequencies measured in 20 listeners), 82.5% of automated verifications were identical to, or within 1 dB of, manual verifications. A paired-samples t-test confirmed automated verification to be an average of 91.9 seconds faster than manual verification.

Conclusion: Automated verification was able to provide an accurate match to target within recommended tolerances for hearing aid fittings and was significantly quicker than manual verification. These data suggest that automated verification of hearing aids could play a role in paediatric audiological management.

Objective: It is thought that decreased sound tolerance can be subdivided into distinct types including misophonia (involving specific trigger sounds) and hyperacusis (broader in profile). However, there are few established methods for differentially assessing these disorders and this is complicated by the fact that some measures (e.g. the HQ Hyperacusis Questionnaire) were developed before the concept of misophonia was accepted.

Design/study sample: We took a group of N = 119 participants with misophonia (varying in severity) and asked them about the presence of hyperacusis (based on a scoping review definition).

Results: Scores for some items on the HQ were correlated with scores for misophonia severity (e.g. social impact of sound) and others with scores for hyperacusis (e.g. ability to concentrate in noise). Similarly, some trigger sounds were more indicative of hyperacusis (e.g. dishes being stacked) and others were more indicative of misophonia in the absence of hyperacusis (e.g. chewing).

Conclusions: These double dissociations provide compelling evidence for separable forms of sound intolerance. Moreover, our research suggests that a single-item question about hyperacusis is associated with other characteristics of hyperacusis, even when assessed 18 months later.